North Wales Our Food

British food is about more than what we put on our plates.

Our landscape, our climate and our history define

what we grow and where we grow it.

Ah!

This is the mustard that built empires.

Each place, each region, each food has its own story to tell.

Does it make them more delicious that they're smaller?

I think they're sweeter-tasting, yes.

I'm exploring Britain to discover how our soils and seas

have shaped our tastes and traditions.

Because our food is who we are.

So, if we carry on in this direction,

-do we have to shout something before we go?

-Haiptrw ho!

THEY WHISTLE

Alongside me on this journey

are horticulturalist Alys Fowler,

botanist James Wong...

Look at that. I've never seen that much essential oil.

-It will build in this tank so that we get 40 litres or so.

-Wow.

..archaeologist Alex Langlands

and historian Lucy Worsley.

We've been eating turkey for Christmas since the 1500s.

Quite surprising, seeing as they actually come from Mexico.

This is the story of Our Food.

This time, we're in North Wales.

A raw, elemental landscape, defined by nature.

And I'm exploring it in the footsteps of the drovers,

remarkable men who once walked livestock

hundreds of miles to market.

You know, an odd thing, when I was preparing to come up here

to follow the route of the drovers,

I was with my wife at my mother-in-law's house,

and she said, "My family were drovers,

"my great-great-great-great grandfather was a drover."

And she went upstairs and got this photo.

And it shows four drovers and the one on the far left of the brothers

is Daniel Jones, her great-great-great-great-grandfather.

And thus my great-great-great-great great-grandfather-in-law.

It mightn't sound like much, but it connects me

to these strange, mysterious people.

I'm going to try and pick up the route of the drovers

to find out just exactly what these forgotten fellows actually did.

I'm going to be travelling right across North Wales.

Through rugged terrain that can only be harnessed by sheer, hard graft,

using just some of the droving tracks that crisscross the country.

My journey begins in the far west,

meeting the animals that were once at the centre of the droving trade.

I'm starting on the island of Anglesey,

just off the coast of North Wales.

I'd say they might be a bit stiff.

Farmer Brian Thomas is taking me to see his pedigree herd

of Welsh Black cattle.

We're safe, are we? As long as we're in the Land Rover?

Welsh Blacks have been farmed out on these hills

since before records began. How long before, we don't know.

And they look incredibly sweet and fluffy and furry.

These, the breeding stock, as you can see,

now, they've got very good coats on them, they're tough and hardy.

Their hardiness has presumably been developed over time

because of the, you'll forgive me,

incredibly harsh conditions in this part of the country.

We get a lot of wind and rain and that's why the breed has developed.

They've actually got very, very thick hides on them,

compared to the continental breeds of cattle.

I've seen cattle with icicles hanging down their bellies

-and things like that.

-These ones?

-Yeah.

-Really?

-They survived fine.

Brian's family have been farming this herd for more than 80 years.

His father and grandfather bred prize-winning bulls

and developed their own bloodline.

They don't have names, do they? There's too many.

-All the cows have got names, they're pedigree.

-Have they?

-Yeah.

They're all called Gladys, presumably?

No, no, there's a lot of Mariannes and Blodwens.

-And Branwen?

-No, we haven't got a Branwen.

We've got Brendas, Princesses.

So, these are pretty independent, they don't really need you at all.

-Very little.

-You just come out here and drive round in circles.

I just check they're all right, there's nothing new,

which very, very rarely happens.

This is Brian's breeding herd.

The next field has the cattle that are ready for market,

his store cattle. Today, he's bringing them into the farm

for an inspection.

Brian has several hundred Welsh Blacks.

His predecessors, the original farmers of North Wales,

would have had only a handful.

I know that they don't stampede,

but they're all coming this way and I'm just going to be up here.

I'll just be behind this bush, should you need me for anything.

Before road, rail and supermarkets,

farmers would sell their cattle to drovers

who would then walk them to market. They covered huge distances,

some even going as far as the greatest meat market of them all,

London Smithfield.

Well, what does it feel like to be walking after cattle, then?

It's good, it's fine. We could go all the way to London, no problem.

-How far is it from here?

-About 250 miles, I think.

For Welsh farmers, these were, quite literally, cash cows.

They were a currency to be traded.

The English upper and middle classes feasted on Welsh beef,

but, for farmers, the meat was money in their pocket,

rather than food on the table.

So, if you had to drive cattle to London, would you choose these?

Oh, definitely. For a number of reasons.

A, they're very, very quiet, as you see, compared to some of the cattle.

Almost no chat at all, I've noticed.

Also, if you look at them, they've got good, strong bones,

which would be good for walking, they're fit cattle.

As much as I'd love to drove these cattle all way to London,

Brian only walks them from the field down this lane to the farm.

Modern regulations mean any movement beyond the farm

needs licences and big cattle trucks.

-Here we are, London.

-Ha-ha.

Brian farms the cattle with his father Owain Gwilm

and his son Carywan.

And it's all about getting the cattle into the best condition.

Put your hand on the loin there, feel that.

-Better meat.

-So, that's got better meat, has it?

I don't think it's got as much covering on the ribs.

-I'm talking about the loin now.

-Wait a minute.

So, you're saying that this one, this animal here has a good loin,

but the one over here has better ribs?

This carcass will be heavier than that one.

It's high time this went now.

If you left this one another month, it might just go over the top.

And what? Start shrinking?

No, getting a bit too fat.

-Getting too fat.

-Yeah.

Brian and his father need to judge

when the cattle are ready to go to market.

But not all of them will go to auction.

-Where are these likely to go?

-These are going to my own meat business.

They'll be either going to the farmers' market

or to the shop in Beaumaris or they'll be eaten in the restaurant.

So, you have your own restaurant, serving your own beef?

I have our own restaurant serving our own beef.

Producing Welsh Blacks used to be all about getting your meat

taken huge distances to market, but, today,

what sells is eating local.

Brian's butchery and restaurant is just a few miles from the fields

where the cattle are fattened up.

It's true, you are also the butcher.

Although, being the farmer, the butcher and employing the chef

has to be pretty unusual.

I was, basically, feeling there.

You were feeling it from that angle.

I could feel that and that that was in good condition.

What would it have looked like if it hadn't been in such good condition?

There wouldn't be the fat cover that's on that to start off with,

and, also, the muscle wouldn't be nearly as thick.

And if you hadn't got the fat,

it wouldn't have the marbling, so it would eat tough.

Cattle that were walked to the hungry English cities

were fattened on the way.

The lusher grasses of the Midlands and the south

provided the final ingredient on their journey to market.

Now, with clever farming, Brian can deliver this kind of taste locally.

Mmm.

Mmm. Oh, that's amazing.

Walking around in the field with the cows

and just seeing all that grass that they're eating,

you become very aware that it's just an animal,

a machine to turn the grass into something we can eat.

I'm almost imagining that slightly acidic Welsh soil

actually gets through the grass into the...

We're also high in mineral soil in Anglesey.

In Roman times, the biggest copper mines in the world were here.

Amazing to think the Romans ate these steaks.

I'm sorry, Brian, you're standing there with your knife and fork

and I'm not letting you near it.

But, I guess, you've eaten plenty of this stuff.

I need to prepare myself for the long journey ahead.

Welsh Blacks are hardy, and they need to be.

The North Wales landscape is full of challenges.

To you and me, the mountains of Snowdonia look beautiful,

but, historically, they were harsh, unforgiving places.

It's hard to grow anything here,

but, in the far north-east, the mountains briefly fall away

to reveal a precious oasis of rich soil.

Botanist James Wong is discovering the roots

of a very traditional Welsh crop.

What would the Welsh choose to grow

in their prime bit of agricultural land?

Well, it's the leek, of course. Thousands of them.

And the incredible thing that you never notice in the supermarkets

is this amazing, kind of, powdery, steel blue

as far as the eye can see.

Almost, kind of, exotic-looking.

Despite it being a Welsh icon, the botany, the origin of the leek

is still a little bit of a mystery.

There is a native plant from which the species is derived

that does grow in Wales and the South West of England

and right across the Mediterranean,

but there's an alternate theory that the Romans introduced it.

The humble leek has been part of the Welsh diet for thousands of years.

They were grown here, on every smallholding and in every garden.

A hearty, winter food with a distinctive flavour.

The first thing you notice, when you slice into one of these little guys,

is that really pungent, sort of sulphury smell

and that's made by sulphur compounds that are found in everything

in the allium family, the onion family.

So, onions, shallots, garlic etc.

It's a chemical called allicin

which is developed in the plant as a kind of internal insecticide.

It's also antibacterial and antifungal,

kind of like a plant's security system

to ensure it doesn't get attacked by things.

To be farmed on any kind of scale,

leeks need fertile, well-drained soil.

Until recently, Wales had to import commercially-grown leeks

from England and Holland.

Charlie Lightbown, though, brought Welsh leeks home.

How many acres have you got here?

About 400 acres all together.

So, this area of Wales,

is this one of the best places to grow leeks in the country?

Well, Wales has got an awful lot of agricultural land, as you've seen,

but there's probably only 2% of it that's Grade 1 or Grade 2.

And you need Grade 1, Grade 2 land to grow vegetables

and especially leeks, they're a very thirsty and a very hungry crop.

So, presumably, these are quite small pockets of land, you know.

50 miles away, could you grow a crop like this, necessarily?

No, 15 miles away, you couldn't grow a crop like this.

You know, if you look over there, you're up the top of a hill.

Leeks are as embedded in Welsh history as they are in the soil.

The association is thought to have started with St David,

who was said to have lived on bread, water and leeks alone

in the 6th century.

From this, came stories of them being worn into battle

against the Saxons and even the French.

Now, they're a symbol of St David's Day.

Not just a vegetable, a source of Welsh pride.

These are what we call our really Welsh leeks,

the ones that we sell in Wales, we sell them through Welsh stores.

And what about the Union Jack ones?

The Union Jacks are sold throughout the rest of the UK.

And it's the same product, just packaged differently?

On the Welsh, we allow just a little bit more flag.

There are a few traditional Welsh leek recipes

that call for the use of more of the flag,

so more of this part of the leek.

So, when you say the flag, you mean this green section, here,

-the extra section of leek.

-Exactly.

Really? So, there's a consumer difference between in Wales

-and the rest of the UK?

-That's right, yeah.

This is leek farming on an industrial scale.

The harvester can process up to seven tonnes of leeks a day.

It moves across the field, following the workers as they cut the crop.

Leeks are trimmed, washed, sorted and packed, all on the move.

Supermarkets have notoriously exacting standards.

-If you look at that one.

-Yeah.

-That's bent.

If you look at this one, it's too thin.

You've got some here that are kind of quirky-shaped,

presumably, these don't make the grade.

They'd be difficult for customers to put in shopping baskets.

They will either go and be sold for processing

or they will be put into the discounted ranges.

So, it's not only about washing and cutting and selecting

that makes them perfect,

presumably, it's right down from when you sow the seed,

it's about getting the right variety.

We want a uniform crop. It becomes so much faster and more economical.

Leeks were once a subsistence staple.

Now they're a 21st-century crop.

In this field, Charlie is trialling over 200 different varieties

to try to find the perfect range of supermarket leeks.

-This is the future of leek growing, what we're standing in.

-It is.

I can't tell the difference between any of them.

They all have different characteristics

in terms of disease resistance, their growth habit

and the time of year we want to harvest them.

Number 237, here, this is much more of a blue-green than, say, this one,

-if you have them alongside each other.

-Oh, wow.

And what we find with these blue-green varieties

is they go through the winter a lot better.

If we're going to have more really cold winters,

we've got to look for varieties

that'll withstand the cold temperatures.

Fantastic. So, what else are you selecting?

So, different varieties for different end customers.

So, for pre-packaged leeks, pre-packed leeks,

we don't want any leaf at all, we want a really long shank.

So, like, if you get one of those multi-buy packs,

it's a different genetic variety from buying individual leeks.

-Yes.

-That's so cool.

On Anglesey, I'm picking up the trail of the drovers

and their prized Welsh Black cattle.

The movement of meat on the hoof is centuries old.

As cities grew, so did the trade.

-These cattle look like they're being droved. Look at them.

-Oh, yes.

-They're walking along in a perfect line.

-They know one another.

Reverend Emlyn Richards has been researching

the Anglesey droves for years.

Farmers would hand their animals over to skilled drovers

who'd bring the herd together in lanes like these.

Cattle would join in their ones and twos,

however many needed to be sold that year.

All the little lanes and roads in those days

were very, very narrow, just the width of a cart and a horse.

But this is different all together.

This is wider.

Yes, much, much wider.

-And you brought the cattle in here, but why?

-To bring them together.

-Otherwise, they'd be fooling around.

-Because they didn't know each other.

They didn't know one other, they'd be afraid of one another.

If you keep them together in here, they soon become friends.

-It's like a departure lounge.

-Yes, to get them ready for the journey.

But, to a drover, every face here would mean something.

Can you do that? This one with the white face, right in the middle,

-I would, I would say she's pretty mean. Is that fair?

-Ha-ha.

Well, that could be, that could be.

Whereas, this one coming through is the boss, surely.

But they would know the nature of every one of them, you know.

It was a very special relationship

between man and an animal.

Once the cattle were gathered,

the drovers would head to the Menai Strait,

the stretch of tidal water that makes Anglesey an island.

The Reverend's brother Harry joins us

as we reach this rather significant hurdle.

And supposing this were a couple of hundred years ago

and we were driving our cattle here, there was no bridge.

I mean, this is Victorian.

Oh, yes, there wasn't a bridge until 1826, you see.

And when you think of it,

there could be anything between 300 and 400 cattle.

We've got all these cattle and we've driven them here,

then we have to get them onto the mainland, so how do we do that?

Cattle are afraid of anything strange. And to them,

this vast water will be a cause of fright for them.

The boatmen would be here, ready, you see,

-to start them.

-The boatmen? So, they put the cattle on boats?

No, no. The boats were looking after them, to guide them over.

-And how deep is it?

-Oh, it's very, very deep.

-So, the cattle don't walk, they swim?

-Goodness me, no.

-So, basically, they looked like ducks with horns.

-Yes, quite true.

If it wasn't for a reverend telling me,

I think I'd find it hard to believe

that cattle actually swam to the other side.

The drovers had songs for their epic journeys.

Songs and stories that are kept alive by people

like the Reverend and Harry.

# Fe gerddais lawer milltir

# Yng ngwres yr haf a'r swch

# A rhyfedd y ddylanwad Ar eidion gwyllt a byw... #

You know, it's not actually as hard as I thought it would be

to imagine how it looked.

The noise and the shouting

and the people singing like this to keep themselves entertained,

drown out the apparently miserable sound of these lowing animals,

just, sort of, heading off into the unknown

for months and months and months.

# Roedd gyrroedd gwartheg ffeiriau

# Yn nabod swn dy lais

# Yn nabod swn dy lais

# Yn nabod swn dy lais

# Roedd gyrroedd gwartheg ffeiriau

# Yn nabod swn dy lais. #

The Menai Strait was the first big challenge for the drovers

on their journey east.

This stretch of water is famous

for its ever-changing and often treacherous tidal currents.

At the eastern end, near Beaumaris, the Strait opens out.

Before I head any further on my journey,

I'm stopping off to take a closer look.

This dramatic, melancholy, rather beautiful scene -

the fast-flowing, grey water of the Menai Strait,

the rain lashing down on a fast-disappearing Snowdon

on the Welsh mainland - has remained more or less unchanged

for thousands of years, barring the odd, bright orange buoy,

the odd house, the odd pylon.

What has changed is what lies beneath the surface,

which is one of Wales's newest pieces of farmland.

But to see it properly, we'll have to wait until the tide goes out.

The coasts around North Wales are rich in shellfish.

Cockles, mussels and oysters are amongst our truly indigenous

and ancient foods and they've been harvested by locals for centuries.

Traditionally, they were raked by hand.

Hard, backbreaking work for little return.

But a group of enterprising fishermen thought

there had to be a better way.

They decided to supplement nature's harvest and start farming shellfish.

The result? The UK's biggest mussel farm,

where a staggering three quarters of our farmed mussels come from.

Not that you'd ever know it.

Where we're standing now, on a normal tide, it's about...

-the height of the tide would be about three metres here.

-Really?

That's an enormous amount of water to go out and in.

James Wilson doesn't often visit his farm by foot.

15 minutes of trudging across muddy sand

and I still haven't seen a mussel.

It's amazing, I've never stood in a place like this. The sea disappears

and it's just a whole land mass that's appeared out of nowhere.

This is the great expanse of Lafan Sands.

Is there anything about the tides

that makes it particularly good for your purposes?

It's got enough flow of water over it,

so there's a lot of food coming in,

but it's not too much that they get dislodged and pushed away.

It's a fantastic place to grow mussels.

It takes another 15 minutes of walking

but, suddenly, we reached the first mussels.

Hoards of mussels, like the armies of Genghis Khan

across the plains of Mongolia.

-Yes, slightly less effective and not so bloodthirsty.

-And more fishy.

To the untrained eye, this might look like a natural mussel bed,

but these fishy hoards have actually been brought here as seed mussels

by James and his team. The farm is divided into three zones,

each one further from the shore.

The first area we reach is the nursery,

where the youngest mussels are left to toughen up.

They grow really, really fast, so in the first year,

they'll probably grow, that's 30mm in size.

And you could eat it now?

Well, I mean, yeah, the legal minimum size is 45mm.

-Right.

-So, another third bigger than that one now.

To get that third extra in size,

-that will probably take another year.

-Right.

We have them here to get them used to being exposed to the air,

makes them stronger and they grow a harder shell.

Some farmed mussels are grown on ropes,

but all these need is the seabed, which I'm slowly sinking into.

A mussel is a filter feeder, so it filters stuff out of the water,

some of which it eats, some of which it can't.

The stuff it can't eat, it excretes out and that's what this is.

A kilo of mussels will produce about 17 kilos of faecal matter a year.

-It puts everything into...

-Hey!

Yeah. That could have been worse, I think.

Do you think? Pull me out of here.

I've been walking half an hour to get out to these mussels

and now, I'm going to spend the rest of my life here with them.

Wait, wait, wait. There's some movement, there's some movement.

I'm getting stuck now.

THEY LAUGH

This is the most dangerous kind of farming I've ever known,

I would rather fish for shark.

This is ridiculous.

James isn't deterred and, once I'm free,

makes me walk even further from the safety of the shoreline.

The mussels from the nursery area

are moved here by boat, when their shells have hardened up.

We're in the intertidal, subtidal boundary now,

so the mussels are underneath the water for slightly longer.

But if you feel those, they feel quite solid,

-but a bit light. If you feel these ones now, after they've...

-Yeah.

They're considerably heavier and more solid.

-And these are these fellows, here.

-We hold them here for about a year.

For the last stage, the mussels are moved beyond the reach of the tides.

Submerged all the time, they feed constantly

in the rich waters of the Menai Strait.

Those mussels are safe from us for another day.

They'll be safe from us until we're on the boat, in which case,

-we can get them.

-Then you....

-They're not safe from me ever.

James's boat is one of a small fleet

that can harvest 11,000 tonnes of mussels a year.

The dredger has a shallow draft, so she can float serenely

over the mussel beds I've just been falling over in.

Everyone takes their shoes off in here, I'm sorry.

How very Japanese of you.

The job today is to re-lay mussels in the deepest beds

for the final fattening-up stage.

Fishing by dredging has a terrible name

for destroying the fragile ocean bed. But the idea here

is that they slice through the mussel mud,

leaving the seabed underneath untouched.

And, as they scoop up the mussels,

much of that sludge gets washed away in the current.

We're as natural as we can be.

The only thing that we're doing is moving the animals themselves

around into different parts of the seabed.

You're doing what mussels would do, if they had legs.

-I suppose so.

-And you're just giving them a little wash there, are you?

-Little wash to get off some of the...

-Look at that!

Looks like a car wash.

I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a mussel farmer,

but I do know how to eat them.

-Where can I buy them?

-Unfortunately, you can't buy them in this country.

-Certainly not...

-You what?!

-I know, it's crazy.

James can't find a market in British supermarkets,

so he sells to the Dutch, who supply shops across Europe.

I'd like to sell mussels not just locally in North Wales

or within Wales, but throughout the whole of the UK.

It would be a brilliant thing to do.

It's a really strange cos this whole story has been, to me,

nice and local and sustainable,

and it's us and you're British, and it's here and it's in Wales,

and it's great, and we're making the most of our natural resources,

and then they're going abroad.

When I have talked to buyers in supermarket chains, they say,

"Oh, dredged mussels, I don't want to eat them, they're gritty."

And, you know, they do live in mud, but these have been cleaned,

so, perhaps, you can tell me.

Gritty?

-Any?

-Amazing.

-Yeah?

-Yeah, yeah, they're like butter.

While James and I polish off the moules mariniere,

the boat is still relentlessly lifting

their younger brethren into the dredger.

-What's the difference in colour?

-Different sexes.

That's very orange, what's that?

That's a female. The paler ones are male.

Now the dredged mussels are flushed out of the ship

to settle in their new home.

In a few months, all plump and succulent,

they'll be harvested and sent off to the lucky old Dutch.

It's time to leave the boat

and continue my droving journey into the mountains.

In North Wales, persistence is what counts.

Persistence to produce food in a landscape full of challenges.

Historian Lucy Worsley has headed east to the Welsh borders,

in search of an exotic crop with its roots in the past.

The local baker Wynn Roberts has been making something special for me,

something you wouldn't expect to find in Wales.

-Hi there, Wynn.

-Hi.

So, this is what I've come to see.

How would you describe the scent of it then?

What's it like?

Like a sweet...sour, earthy.

-It's quite hard to categorise, isn't it?

-Very hard.

There's also something a bit rough and wild about it.

We're making buns with saffron, the most expensive spice in the world.

-Oops.

-Oops.

-Do you know?

It was really, really common in medieval and Tudor diets.

-They loved it.

-Good Lord.

Believe it or not,

this saffron was grown just up the road from here, in Wales.

It's a spice we associate with exotic, foreign places,

but, actually, it has a long British history.

Why does this feel rude? HE LAUGHS

England was once a major grower of saffron

and entire towns made their name from it. By the 16th century,

Chipping Walden in Essex

was so famous for the spice that it became known as Saffron Walden.

Look at these lovely buns!

It's a spice whose taste nearly defies description.

-There's an aftertaste on it.

-Yeah, definitely.

There's something exotic about it. Very nice, indeed.

Autumn crocuses hold the secret of saffron.

They've been cultivated by humans for 5,000 years.

And the only reason they're growing in this corner of North Wales

is Caroline Riden.

What's the correct picking technique?

Well, you want to go as far down the stem as you can.

-Not picking a leaf.

-Like that?

-Yeah, that's right.

So, those are its three red stigmas,

female organs of the plant, the bit we want.

And the yellow stamens, male part of the plant.

-That's right.

-We don't want.

-No.

Saffron is the product, not of nature,

but of thousands of years of hard work.

The crocuses have been so extensively bred for their stigmas

that they're now sterile. They can't reproduce without our help.

It may have come over with the Romans.

They introduced so many things, didn't they?

But because saffron is human-dependent,

saffron dies out in land and it has to be reintroduced.

We have surges of historic reintroduction of saffron

for quite different reasons.

Edward III, when he wanted the wool to develop into a cloth trade,

encouraged dyeing, and saffron, then, became one of the big dyes.

By the 19th century, British saffron was in decline.

It was labour intensive

and the expanding Empire sucked in ever more spices.

Caroline's the only commercial grower of saffron

left in Britain and she does it on a very small scale.

In saffron's English heyday,

it was grown in the hot, dry soils of Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk,

not wet, old Wales.

When we started growing it in '85, we didn't know how to grow it.

We've got rather nasty, clay soil here,

and it prefers a chalky, sandy soil.

But we've added quite a bit of sand and compost.

It likes a very hot summer

and then a drop in soil temperature to trigger flowering.

Harvesting saffron is so delicate that it's almost always done by hand.

So what happens to the red stigmas next? What do we do with those?

Take a flower and gather together the three.

And then, you get the end

-and you see how far you can pull it down the stem.

-Ah-ha. Oh, OK.

And we've got to dry them.

The whole secret of turning - this is called wet saffron -

-into hay, which is the spice, is in the drying.

-Ah.

And there are as many ways of drying saffron

as there are of picking it, probably.

It's a painstaking process,

but when a spice costs £4,000 a kilo, it's worth it.

I got a bit daunted by the fact that you need 150 crocuses

to produce just one gram.

But, actually, one gram is a lot of saffron, isn't it?

-Well, one gram is between 450 and 500 threads.

-Yeah.

And if you're having between ten and 20 threads a pinch,

you're going to get between 20 to 40 meals out of that.

-Out of one gram only.

-Yes. It is very good value

because you only need a very little bit.

Do you like the taste of saffron?

Yes, I do. It's more a sensation than a taste.

When you eat something with saffron,

to me, it's like a very good wine and you suddenly feel a lift

at the back of your palate, you think, "Mmm, I like that."

But what I really like is the colour.

Yes, it's a beautiful, clear yellow, isn't it?

There's no colour like saffron yellow, sunlight yellow.

I'm heading east, following the routes of the drovers

who walked Welsh meat to market.

We're now approaching a true drovers' road,

over this terrific piece of mountainside.

-Where it says, I notice, "Unsuitable for motor vehicles."

-That's right.

Idris Evans, a droving historian, is taking me up into the hills.

These tracks through the valleys

kept the drove from mixing with other livestock along the way.

But drovers also forged their own paths through the mountains.

They didn't like to pay tolls cos it would cost them extra money.

-So, are we dodging toll roads?

-That's right.

Very often, they had to divert around the toll houses

which, in fact, was a problem because it cost them extra time.

They'd worked out a system of an average speed

-of about two miles per hour.

-Were there dangers of bandits up here?

Of course. Highwaymen were waiting for them,

they knew they were carrying money.

Cattle rustlers were all around here.

-You could sort of see a bandit coming, more or less.

-That's right.

-For example, I don't think there are any now.

-I hope not, I hope not.

Many of the roads that cut through the mountains and valleys today

started life as drovers' tracks.

In other places, these trails have all but disappeared.

A lone bridge stands stranded,

the ghost of a droving route and trade long since gone.

This bridge is, er...

The other interesting thing is, when we were wading through that water,

if we hadn't got our modern wellies, we'd have got wet.

Problem with feet.

So they greased their feet before they ever started with pig fat.

This acted like an oil in an engine because there was no friction,

no friction - no blisters, no blisters - no pain.

So, they walked 300 miles with their feet in lard,

-sliding around in their shoes?

-In pig fat. Known in Welsh as bloneg.

-What a lovely name, bloneg.

-Bloneg.

Yes, the best of the pig fat.

-They'd put on their pants, put on their bloneg.

-That's it.

Once on the road, the drovers would try and keep

their hundreds of cattle organised.

The head drover would have gone on about half an hour ahead,

normally ringing a bell and shouting two words.

Haiptrw ho!

-What does that mean?

-Nobody knows.

Nobody really understands. Whether cattle understood it, nobody knows.

And is he coming back and shouting it to the cattle?

He would just be warning people that he was coming through.

-It's like golfers shouting fore.

-That's right.

They needed to communicate at all times.

Obviously, they hadn't got any mobile phones. They did this.

WHISTLING

-So, these whistles you're doing, they had meanings?

-Oh, yes.

You've got these hundreds and hundreds of cattle crossing there

-and the sound of whistling and shouting.

-Sure.

If we carry on in this direction, do we have to shout something?

Advisable, just in case.

Cos I would hate people to be surprised that we're coming.

-Can you give them a...?

-Haiptrw ho!

-Right.

-We'd better give them a whistle as well.

Looming large over this landscape,

are the dark peaks and crags of Snowdonia.

In recent years, they've become an adventure playground

for climbers and hikers. But for archaeologist Alex Langlands,

this wild landscape has far older tales to tell.

This is an absolutely awesome landscape, it really is.

You know, it's harsh, harsh out here. You've got thin soils

and then it's boggy right down in the valley bottoms.

But, actually, if you look just a little closer,

you can see all the signs of a working landscape

cos all around here, you've got these long, sinuous walls.

Before the hikers came, this was the land of the sheep farmer.

And it still is.

That is textbook glacial valley, isn't it?

It is talked about as a glacial valley,

-but, for me, it's home, isn't it?

-Of course, yeah.

Gwyn Thomas shares his farm with half a million visitors a year.

He also shares it with around 300 purebred, Welsh Mountain sheep.

Like the shepherds who've worked the valleys before him,

Gwyn is producing the best quality meat he can

from the land that he has.

Sheep are one of the few animals that can use the whole mountain

and Gwyn farms the landscape in harmony with the seasons.

Spring, the animals are down the bottom here in spring.

They've been down all winter. The middle bit of the farm

-is called the ffryd.

-The ffryd.

The sheep would have been lambing

and they'd move up into the middle part of the field.

Cos the temperature's rising,

so the grass is growing a bit further up the mountain, right?

-Then the sheep would move up to the mountain.

-OK.

And that's where they'd stay over the summer.

Today, winter is approaching, and Gwyn is bringing the sheep down

from the top of the mountain.

Off she goes.

-Is the dog running up that...?

-She's running up that side now.

-That's a cliff though.

-Yeah.

-HE WHISTLES

-Bagia nol.

-What did you say there?

-Look back.

-In Welsh?

-Bagia nol. Because we work two or three dogs together,

we give them different commands.

-Right.

-One in Welsh, one in English and one in all kinds of language.

Gwyn's sheep belong to the landscape as much as to him

The sheep are all making their way along that road, over there.

They seem to know where they're going here, Gwyn.

Yes, they've been gathered that way

-for, probably, hundreds of years, you know.

-Right.

And because these sheep are hefted to this particular farm...

So, when you say hefted, what do you mean by that?

The ewe lambs have been taken up on to the mountain with their mothers.

They all know where to graze

and where their grazing is on that particular mountain.

-It's like a knowledge, the knowledge that your parents gave you.

-Yes.

-That's constantly being handed down through generations of sheep.

-Yeah.

If you lose the hefting, it's a huge task then, to get the sheep back

-to stay on that particular part of the mountain.

-Right.

That's really precious to you.

-Hefting is very, very important for the uphill farms.

-Yes.

What's the rationale, then, behind some of these walls I can see?

Well, that wall at the top, there, is a boundary wall.

That wall is very, very old. It was built by the French prisoners of war

during the Napoleonic Wars.

If you took your sheep up on the mountain in spring

and the wall wasn't there, they'd come down again.

-Ah, I see.

-So, it's just to keep them up on the mountain area.

So, this all allows you, on your own, just with your dog

-and your hefted sheep, to work this landscape.

-Yes

It's very, very simple.

-HE WHISTLES

-Lie down.

The Welsh Mountain breed is a true upland sheep.

Small, nimble and able to make the best of these rocky slopes.

Lie down. Behind you, boy. Lie down, lie down!

There's a bit of a disagreement here about who knows best, I think,

between dog and shepherd.

Come by.

When the sheep are gathered,

it's a chance to give them a quick once-over.

-And you've got three rams in here?

-There's three with this small group.

Just have a check, see how things are.

The sheep are good at taking care of themselves

but, nonetheless, Gwyn has to keep tabs on them.

What I am wondering about, though,

although we've got some walls here,

-they're pretty light-footed, these characters.

-Yes.

If they go into someone else's land, how do you go about identifying them?

What's unique for us here is that we have an ear notch or notches

several different notches in the ears of the sheep

that are specific to this particular farm.

Farmers like Gwyn make holes and notches in the ears of their sheep,

an ancient system of identification.

I've got a whole book here

with all the local ear marks and this is done by hand.

-Oh, my word. Have you got your farm in here?

-Yes, it's there.

And you're doing this by the notches, not by...

Yes, not by what's written down, I'm looking at the notches.

Oh, there we are.

-Blaen y Nant.

-Oh, yes.

And to the right, off the left ear.

-Top of the left ear there.

-And in the middle, you have a hole.

That is absolutely amazing.

The cuts have been made so that if you alter the notches at all,

-you couldn't cheat.

-Someone could tell.

-This is an absolutely superb system, this.

-Yes.

These sheep will stay together through the winter.

The lambs that are born next spring

will go on to learn the flock's hefting for the future.

It's a cycle that's been going on in these valleys for centuries.

Shepherds and their sheep have shaped this working landscape

and they're still putting food on the table.

No, come on, you do this, you're the expert.

Now, this is lamb, one of your lambs, is it?

This is not lamb, this is mutton.

-Three years old.

-OK.

-A hogget, a male that's been castrated.

-Yeah.

My father, especially, preferred mutton to lamb.

-Try it, try it.

-OK.

Mmm. Oh, that is nice.

Gwyn has worked to return the traditional balance of farming

to the valley, but he's one of the last remaining shepherds here.

-Same landscape, same animals.

-Same animals,

but a lot less people, really. Is it a lonely place now?

No, we have half a million visitors

coming to the upper part of the farm. So, really, it's not lonely.

It's different now. What I can't get my head round is,

when I come off the mountain in the morning,

and these visitors are going up to climb, nobody will say hello to you.

I say good morning.

And they look at me as if I've got two heads, you know.

It's just amazing, really.

And you're clearly passionate, not just about farming,

but the landscape as well.

Well, you keep on trying, don't you?

Survival, it's built into us in the mountains here, you know.

Yeah.

Eat your food, it's getting cold.

The drovers had to make their way through these mountains.

Travelling at around two miles an hour,

it could take just over two weeks to reach the Midlands.

Idris and I have got as far as the village

of Llanarmon Dyffrn Ceiriog. It stands at what was once the junction

of several key droving routes

and would have been a welcome sight for weary herdsmen and their cattle.

I mean, from here, we can see, sort of, ten white cattle and four sheep.

Presumably, there'd have been times, in the 17th century,

you'd have looked down, it would've been incredibly noisy and smelly

and just steaming, like the car park of a modern service station.

-It would.

-Steaming with cattle traffic.

-Those fields would,

if you looked down from here, you'd see a sea of black,

because there could be hundreds of animals at this stage.

Almost like the Wild West of its day.

Drovers would stop to graze their cattle

in the lush fields on the valley floor.

They'd also take the opportunity to visit the local blacksmith.

Do you know what these are?

-Have a good look.

-Earrings.

-Good guess, but not so.

Those were the shoes that were put on the cattle.

-So, they would fit those...

-They'd really shoe cattle?

They are known as cues, cattle cues.

These would have been made over the winter months by blacksmiths,

farriers, families that had set up around the areas.

-One for each half of the hoof?

-That's right.

It's a cloven hoof, so you had to have eight of these per animal.

It really is not unlike a service station in that you roll in,

drop your cattle off to eat and be shoed and then you for a...

-That's right. It was an old...

-..a beer.

You were allowed to drink and drove? That was all right, was it?

Drovers used to meet at this inn, called The West Arms,

in the 16th century.

Idris has called ahead and asked the chef Grant Williams

to fix me up with some drovers' tucker.

Apparently, an 18th-century head drover would have started his meal

with oatcakes and buttermilk,

followed by mutton and leek cawl, a kind of traditional Welsh stew.

This is amazing, this soup.

I've decided, on this basis of this bowl alone, that Welsh cuisine

-is infinitely better than French.

-Very good, excellent.

And for dessert, toasted cheese.

Drovers brought with them money, trade and news.

The first reports of British victory at the Battle of Waterloo

were carried to Wales by the drovers.

These were trusted men with an important job to do.

-I think we should toast the drovers.

-Ah, so do I. Cheers.

-Cheers.

The story of North Wales isn't just about farming.

People had to get everything they needed

from this beautiful and elemental landscape.

Alys Fowler is venturing to the very edge of Wales,

in search of a truly wild prize.

A fish that can live both in fresh and salt water.

On a clear day, you can see all the way to Snowdon,

and it's a remarkable view, a sort of land of counterpane, of patchwork.

And down below there is the Dovey Valley

and in the Dovey Valley runs a pristine river.

The waters of the Dovey are rich fishing territory.

And prince amongst these fish is the sewin.

This is the Welsh name for a sea trout.

The sewin is hard to catch, but that's not its only secret.

Nigel Milner is a fisheries scientist working at Bangor University

and he's going to show me that not all trout are the same.

-One large sea trout.

-Ha-ha. Oooh.

He's brought along two fish, a brown trout and a sewin or sea trout.

So, this is a sea trout, which is also known here as a sewin, right?

It is, in Wales, they're called sewin.

-The sewin is a characteristic, iconic fish of West Wales.

-Right.

These fish are exactly the same species, but one of them

-has stayed in the river, that's the brown trout...

-With all the spots.

..and the other one has gone to sea as a sea trout

and it's just come back to the river

and it's taken on this really silvery colouration,

which is an adaptation to let it survive in the sea.

They're two different fish, but they were exactly the same beginning?

They come from the same eggs, the same parents,

but some make a decision to go to sea.

They can feed on sand eels and sprat and they grow large very quickly

and they come back as big, fat females with lots of eggs.

There may be more food, but there's also a lot more predators in the sea.

Absolutely. And that's the interesting aspect of this

from the biologist's point of view.

There's a strategy here to be adopted. To go to sea, or not,

is a huge trade-off, a huge risk, huge decision for the fish to make.

For most fish, the change from salt to fresh water at the estuary mouth

is an invisible barrier.

But the sewin isn't most fish.

It can choose to live in the sea

and then come back to spawn in the river.

If I'm going to catch one, I'm going to need some help.

Traditionally, you fish for sewin at night.

They're so precious that licences on the Dovey are strictly controlled.

A season licence will only be granted if you were born within four miles

of the river, which, luckily, my tutor Illtyd was.

Go.

Nearly. Right, nearly. There we are.

He's been catching sewin for almost 50 years

and it's taught him patience.

It takes a lifetime to do that, so I think I'm just going to spend

the rest of the evening flailing about.

I managed to tie a knot.

We dress warmly for the night ahead and pick our flies carefully

because a sewin's mind isn't on its stomach.

What we have to remember is these fish don't actually feed

-in fresh water.

-Right.

Once they've passed the juvenile stage and they've gone to sea,

they come back, they come back purely to spawn.

So, the type of flies that we use are a little bit gaudy.

-Does that make sense?

-Yes, I see what you're doing.

-Yes.

This was the river the sewin were born in,

but their time at sea has made them wary.

Not interested in feeding, they lie in the deep pools by day,

venturing out to search for spawning partners under the cover of darkness.

The slightest torch light near the river will scare them away,

so our camera switches to night vision.

(A fish behind me just leaped.)

It's this very meditative state where it's just you and the river

and the hope of a fish.

And there is something very poetic about that.

I'm yet to quite put the poetry in motion though.

Have you caught something?

I heard this leap and a plop.

There's no fish in this river, it's a big lie.

Around 1am, the clouds clear and a bright moon comes out.

I'm delighted to be able to see the river banks again,

but, for Illtyd, it's a bad omen.

What I've noticed is, since the moon really came up,

that, in itself, is deadly for fishing for sea trout at night.

-Thank you.

-But, of course, fishermen are great for making excuses.

We give up. Illtyd brings, from his car, a brown trout

he was going to have me compare my sewin with,

but my sewin is still in the river.

Fortunately, he caught one yesterday and he's willing to share.

We can compare the taste now of the sea trout with the brown trout.

Which shall I go first for?

Try the brown trout first because I want you to see which one you...

Mmmm. Mmm.

The brown trout is delicious.

But the sewin is in a league of its own.

The cream of fish.

-Oh, my God, it's, it's just...

-Something special.

-Oh, yeah.

-That is just amazing, the difference is huge, isn't it?

-It is, yeah.

It's the flavour of more life experience,

of a fish that's become bigger, stronger, tastier food

by going to sea.

This really is the most delicious fish.

Oh, you can taste that it's been somewhere,

that, you know, it's had an adventure.

A little bit of Wales.

-It is. A rather big bit of Wales, actually.

-Yeah.

I'm nearing the end of my journey through North Wales.

Professor Richard Moore-Colyer is an expert on the droving way of life

and I'm meeting him where the Welsh drovers would have caught

their first glimpse of English pastures.

What a wonderful, typically Welsh view, it is.

It is a typically Welsh view because it's a typically Welsh sort of day.

I would have to take your word for it that that is England.

Behind us lie the mountains of North Wales and, in the mist before us,

sit the border town of Oswestry and the lush plains of the Midlands.

By this time, the cattle would begin to smell the rather splendid grass

that was growing down there, in England.

-So, what's so great about that grass?

-We have to remember that,

in the years before, I suppose, the mid-1930s,

people just thought grass grew,

it was a sort of God-given herb that grew every year

-and you just got on with it.

-I thought that too, I must be frank.

The problem, of course, as far as Wales was concerned,

that the naturally-occurring grasses which grew,

were growing, essentially, on acid soils.

Much of Wales was acidic, it was wet.

The quality of the grass that grew there was sufficient to grow cattle

to what we call store condition,

but it really wasn't quite good enough to fatten them.

Whereas, across there, once you got into England,

the climate, the soil type were such

to produce grass which was even capable of fattening cattle.

Only just across the border into England,

Oswestry is a true market town.

They've been holding a market here every Wednesday since 1190.

Sheep and cattle from both sides of the border

are brought here to be sold.

And there's one breed that looks very familiar.

-What's that?

-It's a Welsh Black.

-Is that a Welsh Black?

Look, it's Welsh Blacks. Cool.

What we have here is farmers bringing their cattle to market to be sold.

Whereas, 150 years ago, most of the cattle

would be sold by farmers from their farms directly to drovers.

-That is a thing that still happens?

-It still happens today, yes.

In parts of Wales now,

because of the improved quality of grassland, animals can be fattened.

But, still, a lot of farmers,

particularly on the more remote hill and upland farms,

produce store cattle for sale for fattening elsewhere.

When they drove them, did they come back a lot scrawnier than that?

After they'd been driven for three weeks from Anglesey

or from Caernarvonshire or West Wales somewhere,

they would have been very, very, considerably leaner than this one.

These ones have basically had a big breakfast and got in a car.

I don't know about a big breakfast, but they've got into a lorry.

Things have changed enormously, but is there any similarity between

the people who were here 100 years ago and this lot?

These men will have had a bacon and egg breakfast and a cup of coffee,

whereas, most Welsh drovers would have breakfasted on strong beer

so they'd have been a little more animated than these fellows.

Would they have all been a bit drunk by the time they came along?

Well, they might have the odd one or two.

In the 17th century, it was reported that 3,000 cattle a year

were walked from Anglesey to England.

By the 18th century, this number had trebled.

The Industrial Revolution increased demand for meat in the cities,

but it also brought with it a new form of transport.

The coming of the railways in the mid-19th century

meant meat could be moved cheaply and, above all, quickly.

So, really, the advent of the railways put paid to the drovers.

To a very large extent. It certainly put paid to long-distance droving.

On the other hand, of course, local droving would still be required

because you've to get the cattle from the farms

-to the railhead to the market.

-This symbiosis between man and beast

living together and moving through the landscape,

that was the thing that slowly petered away.

I think that petered away, yes.

Pretty well by the 1860s, 1870s, that had largely gone.

Over time, the railways also fell from favour.

Oswestry's train station was once a hub for livestock,

now, it's being restored as a museum.

Today, all cattle movements are restricted and licensed.

Animals are transported directly

from field to farm to market by road.

They're very well looked after, of course, but it's different.

It's all a long way, really, from back in Anglesey

with Reverend Richards and with Idris,

coming over the water and into Wales.

And we talked about life being lived at the pace of the cattle,

a symbiosis between man and nature.

Then, the railways came, everything got mechanised and speeded up

and, suddenly, here, it's all about the trucks and the lorries

and traffic and the cars and the metal cages

and hundreds and hundreds of cattle being driven through.

And we're not living at their pace anymore,

we're making them live at ours.

This market is all that's left of a trade

that helped shape North Wales and its food.

This is a part of the country defined by nature and harnessed

with sheer, hard graft.

A land carved out by people like the drovers.

Next time, we're exploring Kent,

the garden of England on the doorstep of Europe.

I don't think I've ever seen anything

-that looks less like beer.

-It's ale, lad, it's ale.

-Ale!

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